Kickoff for KDE on Maemo

A Qt developer has brought a piece of KDE to Maemo. After plasmoids, this week brings the Plasma desktop. Also a KDE Maemo mailing list.

Qt developer Alexis Ménard in Oslo first installed the entire Plasma desktop on a Nokia N900 device with Maemo Linux. In a video he shows using a stylus to move Plasma-embedded plasmoids around in a cube puzzle.

Making things "finger-enable" is still a challenge, however, as Ménard writes in his blog, because the current plasmoids (Plasma applets) still don't provide it. He also admits that a lot of hardware integration needs to be done, for instance, for the battery, network, and mobile phone profile.

Ménard nevertheless designates his work as a "good start." In the KDE source repository playground he integrated a separate "plasma-mobile shell" as evidence.

A KDE Plasma mailing list was created just days ago with encouragement by fellow French KDE programmer Kévin Ottens. Previously the KDE project had a TechBase wiki to collect the various work and tools surrounding Maemo.

The switch from KDE to Maemo is already being hotly discussed in the mailing list regarding the developer and use model. KDE director Sebastian Kügler already asserted that more than one Plasma shell is a good idea and acknowledges the full effect of the KDE-Maemo consolidation: "If you plug your N900 into the TV (works out of the box for me :)), you'll likely want media center functionality."

Mobile phone maker Nokia owns the dual-licensed Qt graphic toolkit. Beginning of October it brought its Qt and Maemo investments on a singe track when it ported Qt to version 5 of its homegrown mobile Linux platform. At the Qt Developer Days in Munich in mid-October, head of Nokia's Qt Software division Sebastian Nyström announced that he wants a tenfold growth for Qt.